Everyday tips from MonkeyFilter

An assload of handy (and sometimes hilarious and asinine) everyday tips. Some NSFW. Here’s a few of my faves:

When you drop a small object, like a pill, DO NOT flail about trying to catch it; instead stand still and watch it land. Half the time trying to catch it means it bounces off you in some bizarre direction, or that you don’t see where it actually goes.

Keep an old blanket in the car. It can be used for spontaneous picnics, sleeping in rest areas, and covering up the random homeless person who looks cold.

To kill off weeds between bricks or in the cobblestones on your street, mix half-and-half white vinegar and cheap dish detergent and squirt it in the joints.

Hot water in a spray bottle will get most small bugs off plants, such as aphids.

A two-liter soda bottle can be used to keep celery fresh. Cut off the top and put a little water in the bottom, then stand the celery stalks in it in your fridge. Use the cut-off top as a funnel to fill your spice jars with bulk spices (way cheaper than buying them in bottles) - the mouth on a two-liter is about the right size for smaller jars.

If you have to leave something (luggage) unattended and don’t want it stolen, try drawing a large chalk circle on the ground around it.

Separate your laundry into their respective washload piles (whites, warm colors, cold colors, whatever) when you take them off, so you don’t have to bother on laundry day.

When waiting for the tube, look out for the faded white line along the platform edge - it’s more worn cos that’s where most of the doors end up stopping.

At the coffee shop I normally go to, there are a couple guys who come in time to time to watch animé on their laptops. They periodically go across the street to get something to eat and ask a random person to watch their stuff. One of them explained it to me as: "I figure if somebody asks or offers to watch your stuff, it's not too safe. But if you're the one who asks them, they feel responsible".

I offer no financial guarantee that this will work, but it has worked out for them so far.

Oh, and buying spices in bulk is okay - but get them unground and grind them in a (used only for spices) coffee grinder. If you get a bulk container of ground spices, by the time you are done, they are flavorless... or possibly flavourless, depending on if you watch the sun rise or set on the Atlantic.

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